


soup, drugs and rock'n'roll

by capricornia



Category: Henry IV - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Sickfic, Wisdom Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 05:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11269236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capricornia/pseuds/capricornia
Summary: That's what happens when your best friend comes into your house to take care of you: she reads all your medical informed consent literature and then bosses you around about it.





	soup, drugs and rock'n'roll

**Author's Note:**

> in honor of my friend fyo - and me, because I just got my wisdom teeth removed. pretty much everything in this fic is taken from my own experience with that. I am not a doctor.

"Oh for God's sake," Kate says as she bangs the tea kettle down on the counter with just a little too much force. "Will you shut up about Henry Lancaster's latest annoying escapades and let me make you some soup?"

Harry glares at her from his living room couch and groans theatrically, one arm flung over his forehead. Kate rolls her eyes. If he were really in terrible pain, he wouldn't be groaning about it; he'd be stoically ignoring it. It's his most annoying quality--and, incidentally, one of his more endearing qualities. Life is confusing like that sometimes.

"What do you want: chicken or split pea?" she calls out from the kitchen. "My mum sent over about six cartons of each, plus mashed potatoes and applesauce and about four tubs of ice cream."

"I want some beer," he says, but it's muffled and sounds slightly off because his mouth is stuffed with gauze, and on top of that, he can't actually feel where his lower lip is.

"Sucks to be you," Kate says as she puts two ice cubes in the mug she got Harry last Christmas--the one with the grumpy cat face on it. She said at the time it reminded her of him on a good day. She knows he cherishes it more than he'll ever admit. "No alcohol for people who just had surgery."

"It's not even bad surgery," Harry protests, but she rolls her eyes again. "It's just wisdom teeth."

"Yep, now you've got two milliliters less wisdom than you had yesterday."

Harry cracks a small smile at that, then immediately regrets it as pain flares up in his jaw.

"The pamphlet says to put ice on it," Kate says, because of course she read his pamphlet. That's what happens when your best friend comes into your house to take care of you: she reads all your medical informed consent literature and then bosses you around about it. "Have you done that?"

"The ice pack they gave me wasn't cold," Harry complains, looking at the ceiling. He hears her hum and looks down. She's peering over at him from the arm of the couch, much closer than he realized. "Sorry," he says, more quietly.

She smiles. "I'll make you a deal," she says. "You pick which soup you want, and we can watch _Back to the Future_ while you take your medicines and I blow off my maths homework."

He nods. "Can you, um--can I have chicken soup?" he asks, and she says "coming right up" and goes to the box that her mother sent with her, and Harry decides then and there that he's going to marry her someday. Probably not within the next week, though, because he wants to be able to have some function in his jaw and doesn't want to look like a frog at his own wedding.

"Oh, Mum," he hears her sigh, "why did you send those little orange juice boxes? He's allergic to oranges."

He smiles, as much as he can smile with gauze in his mouth. It probably makes him look even more like a frog, he thinks.

"And sorry about the tea," she calls to him as she opens the carton of chicken soup. "You're going to have to suck it up--no pun intended--and drink it without a straw." He makes a face at that, and she laughs. "You're cute," she says.

"You're nice," he fires back.

"You'd better relax and not hurt your mouth if you don't want me to spoon-feed you," she says, setting down the bowl of chicken soup and a spoon in front of him.

He mimes throwing the gauze at her as he takes it out of his mouth, then pushes his tongue over the place no longer covered in his mouth.

"No!" she cries. "Harry, you bull-headed idiot. Don't do that! Ugh, just drink your damn tea--here it is, sorry it's so cold but your pamphlet says not to have hot things right away--and do try not to prolong this another week by getting an infection." She betrays the harshness of her words by laying out each pill he has to take neatly on top of their containers.

He scoots over on the couch to make room for her, squeezes his feet under her thighs when she sits down.

"I love you," he says, and it's the clearest thing he's said all day because he doesn't have the gauze stuffed in the sides of his mouth anymore.

"You're a sop," she says, and leans her head on his knees as the opening credits of _Back to the Future_ begin.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 11:30 pm while making soup and feeling sorry for myself. Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine - let me know if there's something I should fix!


End file.
